Our work with schools always starts with asking, ‘are your students working to their full potential?’ This question guides us to dig deeper into improving practice and to developing inclusivity in our classrooms, schools, and communities.

Contact us for an initial 30 minute free consultation to discuss your school's needs and find out more about how our services can support your teachers.

Teacher Coaching

A school is only as good as its teachers and we all want our teachers to be effective, skilled, and caring. Coaching allows teachers to receive feedback, from an experienced and trained educator, on their personal performance then practice skills to improve their instruction. Research shows that teachers are 90% more likely to adopt a new skill or technique through coaching whereas only 20% likely to adopt a new skill with only having attended a workshop. A few hours of coaching a month produces thousands of hours of quality learning for students.

Coaching can focus on a wide variety of skills, from the basics of classroom management, to increasing rigor and including students with special needs. Depending on the needs of the school a coaching package can include time dedicated to:

• Teacher coaching sessions (1:1 or small group) with specific goals

• Teacher collaborative planning (ensuring teachers use their co-planning time effectively)

• Co-teaching or modeling for a teacher

• Special Education Support

• Modeling and direct intervention

• IEP creation, implementation, and data tracking

• Teacher training around specific disabilities

• Creation and implementation of a school-wide student support program

• AVS training (including behavioral challenges, goal tracking, and adaptations)

• Leadership training

• Analysis of leader’s time and strategic planning

• Identification of areas for teacher-training and implementation calendar

• Coaching for effective staff meetings, teacher feedback sessions, and ensuring measurable professional growth

• Support with planning, communicating and carrying out successful parent meetings

• Document writing and revision (such as school policies and behavioral plans)

Professional Development

Every workshop we offer is based on research, experience and the students’ learning needs. All workshops include personalized workshop objectives, 1-2 classroom observations (if not already done), and a resource list with additional information. We therefore focus our workshops on the following areas:

• Rigor, Engagement, and Authentic Learning

  • This workshop dispels the myth that a “hard assignment” or a “difficult class” is intellectually challenging. We show educators how to increase the critical thinking skills students use in the classroom to benefit all students. This includes gifted students and students who are underperforming. We demonstrate how when students are intellectually stimulated they behave better, perform at higher levels, and are more engaged. We provide concrete examples that teachers can use the very next day in class.

    We recommend this workshop in conjunction with  “The Inclusive Classroom” because providing intellectually stimulating lessons is key to the success of students with disabilities.
    

• The Inclusive Classroom : Going Beyond Differentiation 

  • All students deserve to learn in an inclusive classroom - a setting that differentiates for their learning needs, makes accommodations should they need it, and builds a feeling of belonging. These three elements are critical for creating a learning environment that embraces all learners, such as gifted students, students with disabilities, and other marginalized students. Differentiated instruction is effective teaching that pushes all students to learn to their full potential, and this workshop goes beyond ways to differentiate and gets into what kinds of learning differences are most common, how they could present in your classroom, and ways to make accommodations for those students. An inclusive classroom is one that is differentiated, accessible, normalized, and authentic; this workshop will show you how to make that a daily reality.

• Inclusive Planning & Teaching: From Theory to Practice

  • This workshop offers hands-on sessions on lesson planning and implementation utilizing the core areas of critical thinking, authentic learning and inclusion. This session requires teachers to respond to questions such as:

    • What types of learning experiences meet student learning objectives? 

    • How do we use assessment to inform our teaching practices? 

    • What types of critical thinking skills are we asking of students? 

    • How do we include all students in our assessment plans? 

    • What does authentic learning look like for my classroom? 

  • After first reviewing these strategies we move into interactive work where teachers develop lesson plans, with our assistance, that are rigorous, differentiated and inclusive. In order to participate in this workshop, teachers must have participated in the "Rigor, Engagement & Authentic Learning" and "The Inclusive Classroom" workshops.

Pro Bono